Dreaming in Code

Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software

by Scott Rosenberg

Hardcover, 416 pages

English language

Published Jan. 16, 2007 by Crown.

ISBN:: 978-1-4000-8246-9

(17 reviews)

Their story takes us through a maze of dead ends and exhilarating breakthroughs as they and their colleagues wrestle not only with the abstraction of code but with the unpredictability of human behavior, especially their own. Along the way, we encounter black holes, turtles, snakes, dragons, axe-sharpening, and yak-shaving--and take a guided tour through the theories and methods, both brilliant and misguided, that litter the history of software development, from the famous "mythical man-month" to Extreme Programming. Not just for technophiles but for anyone captivated by the drama of invention, Dreaming in Code offers a window into both the information age and the workings of the human mind.From the Hardcover edition.

3 editions

Mark Anderson reviewed Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg

Review of 'Dreaming in Code' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

An interesting read on the complexity and intransigence of software development. I kept thinking about parallels to the enterprise of public education, a similarly complex endeavor in which it is easy to get caught up in the mire, however strong the organization's conviction and drive might be at the outset. Since this particular project, Chandler, that Rosenberg picked ended up coming to naught after he finished his book, you can see him struggling a bit at the end to fit a tidy cap onto the proceedings. But he nicely captures what the innards of a promising but doomed software project looks like, as well as explores a few interesting tangents and arguments within the coding community that still has some relevance a decade later.

nekokat reviewed Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg

Review of 'Dreaming in Code' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

An interesting read, half the story of a typical start-up trainwreck and half a philosophical meditation on why, exactly, "software is hard". Rosenberg takes the time to explain quite a lot about coding and programmer culture in layman's terms -- which is redundant for most programmers, while still being technical enough that I'm not sure, say, my parents would be able to get through it. I think the ideal audience is entrepreneurs and those who find themselves in the position of needing to manage programmers; it would also be a good book to assign undergraduate CS students, since it includes both a readable primer of software engineering methods and a sense of what it means to choose programming as a career.

Five years old as of now (it was published in 2007), so it's charmingly dated in some respects. The book ended on a positive note, but the software project …